Chapter Ten: Search for Aang
When Zuko heard someone coming, he began shooting fire down the hallway to try to hit them, thinking it was the guard again. "I still have until dawn! I want to be left alone until then!" Zuko yelled.
"Truce! Truce!"
Zuko widened his eyes, knowing that accent, and stopped firebending. "Uncle?!" he asked in disbelief. Iroh stepped in front of Zuko's cell, a grin on his face. Zuko gave him a questioning look and Iroh held up a large ring of keys. "Did you talk to my father?! Am I free to go?! Did you find the Avatar?!" Zuko asked, noticing the uniform Iroh was wearing. It was the only conclusion he could come to - Iroh found Aang, talked to his father, his father realized it was all just a misunderstanding, and let them both return home from exile. Iroh didn't say anything as he found the correct key and began unlocking the door. The look of hope left Zuko's eyes. "What really happened?..." he asked, knowing something wasn't right. Just as Iroh sled the cell door open, several balls of fire came down the hallway, footsteps accompanying them. Zuko hurried out of the cell and the two of them made a run for it in the opposite direction the attacks were coming from. Unfortunately, it was also the opposite direction from which Iroh came.
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Now dressed in red, Katara wondered where they should look first. "We can't search the entire nation, can we?" she wondered.
"Maybe we should start at the beginning... Where Aang first sat foot," Toph suggested.
"But we don't know where that is!" Katara said.
"It shouldn't be too hard to figure out. It's probably safe to assume he came by boat, since we haven't ran into many other flying bison... So we just need to find a dock and go from there," Sokka said.
"That actually sounds like a good idea... I'm impressed," Toph said.
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"Come out, come out wherever you are... you little brat..." the general mumbled as he lifted a rock and looked under it. "Let's see... How am I going to explain the Avatar when I find him...? 'Oh, Zuko didn't catch him first; they were working together, sir! Yes, how else do you think all of my troops could have been taken out? Why didn't I mention that Avatar before this? Zuko threatened me, sir! He said he had an army waiting for the signal to attack our villages! Apparently he was lying but I couldn't be sure - innocent lives could have been on the line!' Yes... Something like that..." The general noticed a bush several feet away that appeared to be quivering. He smirked, certain the Avatar was behind it, still tied up and trying to get free. 'When I realized that the Avatar wasn't captured along with Zuko, I knew he must have hid somewhere nearby...' the general thought.
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"Uncle, where are we going?!" Zuko asked.
"I don't know. I've never been here before," Iroh said calmly as the two were dodging fireballs while running through the hallways.
"What?! How do you know you're not leading us into a trap?!" Zuko asked angrily.
"Don't worry, Nephew! We'll know if it's a trap or not when we get there," Iroh said with a smile. Zuko frowned at him.
"How in the world did you find me, anyhow?" Zuko asked after a minute, remembering how they had gone their separate ways quite a while ago, and the two of them not even being on this continent at the time.
"Look!" Iroh yelled, pointing toward the door ahead of them. Sunlight was pouring in through a small barred window at the top of the door.
"I'll bet it's locked," Zuko said, trying to get his uncle back to stark reality. Iroh grinned, lifting the ring of keys he had.
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"Have you seen a short, bald boy, about this tall, and with blue arrows covering his body?" Sokka asked a man. The man shook his head while walking past Sokka, giving the boy a weird look. "Are you sure?!" Sokka called after him. The man kept walking.
"Well, this is the third dock we've been to, and still no one's seen him..." Katara said.
"I guess we'll have to keep following the shoreline until we find a dock where someone's seen Aang," Sokka said.
"I guess..." Katara said tiredly. "Toph, can you bring those fliers I made?"
"What? I'm doin' my part. I've been asking people if they've seen him. You carry your own fliers," Toph said and walked away without bringing them, leaving Katara to go back for the papers.
"Toph needs to learn a lesson about teamwork," Katara grumbled to herself as she went to get the fliers.
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"Heh, heh..." the general said with a smirk as he reached for the bush, expecting to find the Avatar behind it. He pushed the foliage aside to discover one of his own soldiers, bound and gagged, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers covered with little red hearts. "Grrr...!" the general growled angrily.
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Iroh hurried to find the right key and unlock the door, Zuko focused on returning fire. When Iroh got the door open, the two rushed outside and pushed themselves against the door to keep the soldiers from coming out. Zuko used his firebending to weld a section of the door to the wall in order to slow the soldiers down. Afterwards he was breathing heavily. "That's some strong metal..." he mumbled. "C'mon! They'll catch up to us eventually!" he said to Iroh. The two headed toward the shore. 'I'll find you, Avatar... And this time, you won't get away.'
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I hope you liked it.
Hmm... No idea what's gonna happen next. Some stuff about Zuko in this one. I was originally thinking about having him talk to his father some, but I wanted it to be somewhat canon, so I didn't see how I could pull it off.